We stayed one night in Christchurch in a truckies hotel and then picked up our Jucy Campervan on the morning of the Thursday 24th along with lots of DVDs:). After letting Cerys organise the whole car including all of our clothes and bags and shopping for food we set off to the first stop, Hanmer Springs. We arrived in the evening so found a quiet street and parked up at the side for the night. We decided we wouldn't need to stay at camper parks hehe. We cooked our dinner on the camp stove in the freeeeezing cold and then watched a DVD (Robots hehe).

The next morning we woke up and found the car wouldn't start....because we'd run the battery flat! haha. After having the AA start the car again we went to the famous thermal springs. Again it was sooo cold outside and we were getting undressed to swimming stuff! we both ran to the pools and got in as fast as we could. We started at 35 degrees and slowly worked our way up to the 41 degree sulphur pools which made us stink and turned all the jewellery yellow until a few days later when it finally wore off. We didn't realise this was the warmest we'd be for a while!

Our next stop was Greymouth on the West coast and we went to the shantytown. It was our first day of bright sunshine though we still had to wrap up warm! We did gold panning and naturally Cerys did a lot better than me and found a lot more gold! hehe. But she nearly lost it all dropping the bottle on the floor! Major panic haha! We spent the day wandering around the town taking photos in the head boards and I managed to get Cerys in the stocks woop! Unfortuantly I couldn't run away with the car as I was shackled! We had a very yummy lunch of sausage mash and beans then set off for the West coast glaciers.

We stayed over night near Fox glacier and in the morning we had a very early start to hike up the Fox Glacier. We wrapped up very warm, in Cerys' case that meant 5 or 6 layers (including pyjama bottoms underneath leggings underneath jeggins!) and were given boots, coats and crampons. The walk took agggeesss to get to the glacier, it got really hot and some of the walk was right on the cliff edge! As soon as we got on the glacier though, it went sooo cold and everyone was wrapping up again hehe. It was an amazing place and very surreal to look at where we were and the views around us. We had a half hour walk up the glacier itself stopping right in the middle after climbing through yet even more lord of the rings type scenery (which Cerys reminded me of every 5 minutes of course!). After the walk we warmed up in the car then set off towards Queenstown. We stopped about halfway to sleep at a lake that we can't remember the name of.

Next day we made it to Queenstown and had our first Macdonalds in agggesss!! haha. After an hour of trying to decide what to do, we went up the Queenstown Gondala where the views were amazing, we could see the whole of Queenstown and the Remarkables Mountains. We also took a ski lift up the hill further to do the luge ride down. We had a good laugh doing it with lots of sharp corners and near spills! And after our hard work trying not to fall off the mountain we deserved a hot chocolate :). After we began the 280km drive to Dunedin stopping in Alexandra after watching some crazy people doing an AJ Hackett bungy near Queenstown.

We drove the last of the way to Dunedin (pronounced Dun-ee-dun as we got told off by a kiwi hehe) and went to Cadbury World, the only reason for us driving the 280kms to Dunedin and probably Cerys' favourite trip of our last 8 months haha! It was really good just constantly smelling chocolate and the best part we got free chocolate bars! Cerys also made the tour guide very uncomfortable when she told everyone about Cadburys new snowballs (like the shots) hehe. After our tour we started our long drive back to Queenstown eating all our chocolate along the way.